Blog

OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman will formally rejoin the company as the CEO, and will also be on the board of directors, the company said in a blog post on Friday. Altman was ousted from both these roles a few months ago.

OpenAI will also see the induction of new board members even as the company conducted a full investigation to check if Sam Altman had done anything improper.

“We have unanimously concluded that Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI,” stated Bret Taylor, Chair of the OpenAI Board.

This came following an extensive review of Sam Altman’s conduct in OpenAI and the board expressed full confidence in Sam Altman and Greg Brockman as the leaders of the company.

The investigation concluded that “the prior Board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr Altman, but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal.”

The investigation conducted dozens of interviews with members of OpenAI’s prior Board, OpenAI executives, advisors to the prior Board, and other pertinent witnesses; reviewed more than 30,000 documents; and evaluated various corporate actions.

The three new board members of Openai are: Dr Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former EVP and General Counsel at Sony Corporation; and Fidji Simo, CEO and Chair of Instacart.

OpenAI also recently strongly rebutted the allegations made by Tesla Chairman Elon Musk that the artificial intelligence startup had deviated from its mission of being a non-profit organisation.

The founder of the company said there was a discussion between Musk and the OpenAI founders on making the startup a for-profit enterprise, but could not decide on the terms as the Tesla CEO wanted majority control, which the founders were not comfortable about.